The Best Microlearning Platforms For Training in 2025
Discover the best microlearning platforms for training in 2025. Compare features, pricing & user reviews to boost employee skills efficiently.
Discover the future of training in our latest video, “The Best Microlearning Platforms For Training in 2025.” We delve into the most innovative platforms revolutionizing employee education, offering bite-sized content that maximizes retention and engagement. From gamified learning experiences to adaptive assessments, this video highlights top contenders to enhance your training strategy.
#1 – Talentcards
Prices Free – 5 users | Standard $50 – 50 users | Premium $75 – 50 user
#2 – 7taps
Prices Free | Enterprise price on request
#3 – Edume
Prices on Request
#4 – Code of Talent
Prices: Starter Plan $7,99 per user 25 users per month | Partner $4.99 per user 200 users per month
#5 – LearnUpon
Prices on Request
#6 – LifterLMS
Prices Free | Earth Bundle $299 | Universe Bundle $499 | Infinity Bundle $1,499 per year
This Week’s Sponsors
Kinta: Kinta
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:27.560] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 134. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about micro learning, what it is, who it’s aimed at, what are some of the best SaaS and WordPress solutions that enable you to do micro learning. I’m really interested in seeing what Kirk’s views are on micro learning. Is it a bit fluffy, or is there a core to it? I have my views, though, and it should be a great show. So, Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?
[00:01:38.620] – Kurt von Ahnen
Sure thing, Jonathan. My name is Kurt, Kurt von Annen. I own an agency called Manana Nomas. We’re primarily focused on learning and membership websites, and we also work directly with WP Thonic, supporting their customers.
[00:01:52.020] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. Like I say, it should be a great show. You should get some great tips and insights from it. But before we get into the meat and potatoes, we have a message from one of our major sponsors, Kinster. Great company. We really appreciate their support. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back. I also want to take the opportunity to tell you about a great course that Kirk has developed with WP Tonic. It shows you how to build a membership website on WordPress from beginning to end using some of the best tools in WordPress. It’s a great value course. It’s normally around $49. You can get it for half price. Additionally, when you purchase the course, you will receive a coupon code that offers 50% off your first year of hosting with the starter plan using WP Tonic. Great hosting, plus you get all the WordPress tools that Kirk shows you how to build your membership website. It’s a great package. Where can you get it? Well, basically, you need to go over to WP-Tonic. Com/deals, wp-tonic. Com/deals. Additionally, there’s a curated list of the best WordPress plugins, as well as special offers from sponsors, and a wealth of other free resources.
[00:03:23.600] – Jonathan Denwood
What more could you ask for? That’s what I think. Let’s get started. Micro learning. So, Kirek, can you give us a quick outline of what the concept’s about and some of your top-level views about it, Kirek?
[00:03:39.880] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, let’s start with my top-level view: this is a widely misused or abused phrase. So in the simplest of terms, if we were to think about an educational design or instructional design or somebody like that, we would say, okay, micro learning is the ability to take subject matter and break it into very small consumable pieces. I mean, that’s basically what micro learning was and is meant to be. However, we’re now starting to see people misuse it slightly and make it seem like microlearning is just for mobile devices, or that it’s a specialized product that creates training content specifically for this purpose. It’s That’s not true. Microlearning is about taking a broad subject and breaking it down into very small, manageable pieces that are easily learned. There is a lot of value in that process. Corporately speaking, corporations with captive students and captive audiences might create courses that are three hours or two hours long. And it’s painful to get people to take those courses is painful. With microlearning, people get those quick dopamine hits. They tend to finish things quickly and then move on to the next thing.
[00:05:03.180] – Kurt von Ahnen
There’s a great reason behind the subject. I just think it’s largely misused, or maybe the expectations are blown out of proportion based on what it actually is.
[00:05:13.700] – Jonathan Denwood
I think that’s fantastic. I’ve got two quick observations, and I just want to get your views on this. I think what you said is it’s a very similar situation to gamification and how that has been treated. The second thing is I think micro learning was really driven by the explosion of mobile usage, and a lot of the traditional corporate-level learning management systems were designed before the explosion of mobile devices. I know that sounds crazy, but we’re only talking around 208, 209, 2010. It’s about 15 years ago that phones really… We’re probably talking later than that, around in 2016, so about eight years. But the whole market when it comes to eLearning has totally changed because of mobile devices. I think a lot of these players that we’re going to be discussing in the show entered the market because the traditional level corporate LMS platforms really weren’t very suitable for mobile. What’s your own thoughts about this, Kurt?
[00:06:26.600] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, I agree with you part way on the mobile phone usage, but it expands so much further than that. Because if you go back the 12, 10, 15 years, I know I mixed my numbers up in order. I’m seeing if you’re paying attention. It was called Vine. Remember, it was called Vine, those little short videos, and then that eventually became what TikTok is. Then the way that the YouTube videos have progressed from long-form content to short-form content.
[00:06:56.280] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, that oscillates. People say it’s all about short, and now people Well, podcast video hour, two hour. There’s some podcast video shows on YouTube that are over three hours long, aren’t they?
[00:07:08.840] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. Well, Joe Rogan is the number one podcast, and his shows are routinely three hours. So people have the appetite for it. But over time, from a learner perspective, and again, I’m coming at this from the corporate training ideology, what they’re teaching corporately, is they’re telling people, You got to drive this content down into smaller chunks. Chunk. And so for instructional design, the formal word for it is chunking. They say, Take this topic and chunk it. And so that’s why- I like that, chunking. Yeah, that’s why you see things that are like, This broad topic is split into five sections. Each of those sections has 10 lessons and all that. Now, a subset issue that happens from micro learning is that you end up repeating or extending some the topic just to fill space. So in the long run, with micro learning, you often end up with a larger body of training or learning than you had originally, right? If that makes sense. Because some People fall into the, I need 10 lessons for each of the sections in each of the sections. And so sometimes an instructional designer will feel compelled to add sections to the training that really aren’t that important.
[00:08:27.840] – Kurt von Ahnen
And so overall, the overall learning learning package could actually be bigger than if they just made one large course and knocked it out.
[00:08:36.180] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, with your background of working with large corporate organizations and being a training manager with some very large motor sports and companies, what’s been your experience about where micro learning is suitable and when it’s not suitable?
[00:08:56.200] – Kurt von Ahnen
I am a big fan of micro learning in its original intent, and that’s breaking things into smaller chunks. If I can make a topic, if I could take a large topic, break it into six or seven subtopics, and then break them out, right? So in the terms of power sports testing, let’s say I have electrical diagnostics. Well, electrical diagnostics is actually a pretty big topic, right? So then I might have, what does the electrical system look like? What are the individual networking What works within the system? Then the next one might be, what are the components of each system? And so you could just see how that would just naturally break down. The advantage to this is twofold. One, it’s the dopamine hit for the user. So they keep getting that internal sensation like they’re accomplishing something. They finish something, they go to the next topic. They finish something, they go to the next topic. And that encourages people to stick with it and pay more attention to the learning. The other side, when I said it’s a twofold deal, is once the learning is done, think about some of our long form YouTube content you just mentioned and how now we can, what do they call that, timestamp or bookmark the chapters in a video?
[00:10:11.720] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s the same with the learning. If you use really good descriptive titles for your lessons, those lessons then become an ongoing resource. So when you think in terms of training people in software, training people in certain functions, like production functions at a manufacturing facility. If you use good descriptive terms for the titles of your lessons, if it’s on a mobile phone, it becomes a mobile like, directory of resources where you can go directly to what you need a refresher on, get refreshed, get it in 5 or 10 minutes, and get back to work, which that’s a huge, huge benefit to corporate training.
[00:10:56.480] – Jonathan Denwood
I was wondering because I think we’re a good combination for this podcast, folks, because I’ve already got a bit more experience with WordPress than what Kirk has, but Kirk has a lot more experience in eLearning and training and I’ve never worked for a large corporation. I’ve always been an entrepreneur, run about 2-3 reasonably successful businesses. But Kirk got a lot of corporate experience. But I’m I’m going to continue surmising this, Kirk, and I want to see if I’m on the right track. I think when people moved physical training online, and they did it because they wanted to do it on the cheap, it hasn’t worked out that well because to actually develop a course online, so it really does achieve something takes a lot of time and thought, even if you experience it. And does that also apply to micro because they think, Well, we’re just going to split it up. We’re going to take this legacy system and we’re just going to split it into digestible little chunks, and that will solve some of the retention problems. I’ve got a feeling that probably doesn’t work that well.
[00:12:17.720] – Kurt von Ahnen
No. And there needs to be a correction in the origin of the conversation. So when they first took eLearning online, and that was a big phrase, 15 years ago, we’re going to take everything online. It used to be customary to go to a corporate’s head office, meet all the management, go to a classroom, lock yourself in for death by PowerPoint, and do that for hours or days on end. And it was very, very expensive.
[00:12:46.440] – Jonathan Denwood
You might give me just… It sounds like torture.
[00:12:50.840] – Kurt von Ahnen
And it was very, very expensive. So I don’t want to mislead people and make it sound like it didn’t go the right way. But what happened was, and you got to remember, way So way back when these companies were using Scorm authoring tools to make Scorm platforms. They’re like interactive PowerPoints for lack of being overly complicated. And it’s very expensive to make these. So typically, like I worked at one Corporation where we would spend typically 300 to 350 labor hours just assembling the content, the graphics, and making the course. And that course might have been an hour and 15, hour and a half long, right? So somewhere between 75 and 90 minutes. And it would be in SCORM and it would go on that website. Now, here’s the killer. The websites that use that SCORM material, and I’m going back 12, 15 years ago, there were only certain players that got into that field, and it was restrictive. And so many corporations paid $250, $300, $400, $400, $1,000 to have a bespoke custom training website made to put in this content that they were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per course to make. Now, in terms of did they save money over flying people all over the country in hotels and rental cars and all that?
[00:14:16.240] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yes. But it was still very, very expensive. And now what’s happened is you have some of this content, I call it legacy content. We have a lot of this legacy content on these legacy platforms that companies are still making huge investments in. But there’s a small sliver of the corporate space that is recognizing that they’ve been way over budget for a substandard product for way too long, and they’re looking at other newer platforms. The things we’re going to discuss today are a few of those newer platforms. You created a really great list, Jonathan. Some of those-I do actually research the top of the notes.
[00:14:57.000] – Jonathan Denwood
I think that Kurt can see that. I’m also on submising, looking at the reviews on these various products that we’re going to be discussing. I noticed that some of the pitches were exactly pitched in what you just outlined because they were saying, Well, you’ve got your existing LMS, and it doesn’t really work on mobile. Why don’t you supplement, not replace, but Utilize our system for the micro learning? It’s like they’re getting in with the client, they’re opening the door because they know that moving from one large learning management system to another when you’re a corporate-level client, you might have thousands, tens of thousands, is something that is not going to be taken lightly. But if you can just take a chunk a little bit off and build a relationship. That’s what I was getting with some of the Burberry and the videos from some of these companies. Am I on the right track?
[00:16:13.200] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think you are. In a lot of cases, they’re saying, Hey, leave your foundational cornerstone long form content on your main bespoke custom LMS. And you’ll see a lot of these options that we’re talking about today. They stress onboarding, like our focus is onboarding. Well, their focus is onboarding because you’re going to make that out of microcontent. You’re going to onboard staff to your company. And then once they’re in the company and they’re established and they want to apply for a new role within the Corporation, then they’re going to be told, Oh, go to this legacy LMS plan to learn about this clerk position or to learn about this, whatever. But for the basic company onboarding, the simple stuff, they’re putting that into these newer micro learning platforms. I find it really interesting that they’re calling them micro learning platforms and not just e-learning platforms, but micro learning became such a buzzword that I feel like they’re just leveraging it for the marketing sake.
[00:17:13.080] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, it’s a bit similar in the WordPress space with managed hosting. It’s such a generic term now that it could mean almost anything, couldn’t it?
[00:17:22.300] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, absolutely.
[00:17:24.940] – Jonathan Denwood
I definitely have a view of what managed WordPress Hosting is, but what I think it is and what other people think it is, I think there’s a big band of difference, but I might be wrong here. This Let’s quickly look at a couple, and then we have a break and we finish off and have some final thoughts in the second half. So this one from Talent LMS, and they got a secondary product called Talent Cards. Looked at a lot of reviews online, a lot of YouTube. Seems to be dominated by one reviewer, one company that does a lot of reviews on Talent LMS, and also on talent cards. Seems to have some great strengths. Price, they got a free product, but you can only use five users on it. Then they got standard, which is 50 dollars for 50 users. And then you got Premier 75 for 50, and you got additional functionality, but you can also add users. They have different levels for more users. What’s Has talent cards been on your A dollar, so when you got any views about it, Kurt?
[00:18:51.000] – Kurt von Ahnen
I have a fair amount of views about talent cards, actually. And this is unique. We don’t usually start with one that I like first. We usually pick something I’m not fond of, and then we grow into things I do like. Talent cards does a really good job. So the thing that people need to… And one of the reasons I like talent cards, and let’s be clear, they have talent LMS, and then they have talent cards. And So they actually took the idea of micro learning and said, Hey, let’s pair this down. What were the features that we need for just micro learning? So it doesn’t have all the robust features of a full fledged LMS. It’s got some limited things about it, but it is specifically designated to work on mobile devices, which is great. It’s got some design features that work. It’s not full fledged free, flexible design, but they’ve got some design features that work well. And the pricing, I think, is interesting. And there’s something that’s always confusing with SaaS platforms and eLearning, and that is what is a user One of the things I like about talent cards is they actually define the user right in their pricing page and say that it is anybody that downloads the app and is registered as one of your students.
[00:20:12.280] – Kurt von Ahnen
Whereas in other LMSs, the pricing sometimes is a little higher, but it’s only for active users, and it’s for anyone that signs in during the month. I think this is a much clear-cut way for it.
[00:20:24.960] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I prefer it. It’s just if they’ve downloaded it, registered their The user in the story.
[00:20:31.320] – Kurt von Ahnen
There’s things I really like about this platform. One, I’m a fan of Talent LMS. We had the conversation before about LMSs. Talent is one of the top performing ones in my personal opinion.
[00:20:43.780] – Jonathan Denwood
I agree. I think it’s one of the better ones.
[00:20:47.980] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s the sister product. It’s great on mobile, and they’re up front about their pricing. I don’t think there’s going to be too many surprises for a corporation running their training on this platform.
[00:20:57.500] – Jonathan Denwood
On to another one, 7Taps. Been around about probably longer than I think because time has just shot past since COVID. I think time, also I’m getting older, but also I think time really did accelerate during COVID and after it, I might be wrong, but that’s just my impression, is it’s been around about four or five years, maybe less, started by a lady entrepreneur that’s got a lot of experience. I’ve got her name though, but she’s got a lot of experience. I think she worked for Stanford University as a UX and a eLearning specialist. They did A lot of promotion online, did a lot of live webinars, did a lot of stuff. It looks pretty good to me, but the pricing, they’ve gone a different way. They do offer free products But that doesn’t seem to have any user restraints. I might be wrong there, but I did do a reasonable look over. I probably need to look in their support, but I couldn’t find a limit. It is cut down to some degree, But then if you want everything, it’s price on request, it’s enterprise level. It’s a very different pricing model, isn’t it? Do you know anything about 7Taps?
[00:22:29.560] – Kurt von Ahnen
7taps And TAPS is one of the ones that I’m not the hugest fan of, Jonathan. For a couple of reasons, you mentioned the difference between free and paid. If you really look at what free offers, it doesn’t even offer membership control. And so when you think about being a learning director or a director of learning or whatever your position is, and you start looking at platforms and you start saying, well, wait a minute, how do I manage my students? Well, I can’t. There’s no learner management tools. There’s no learner reminders. There’s no SCORM. I mentioned SCORM earlier. Scorm is very prevalent in the corporate training space, right? Well, SCORM comes on the paid plan, but not on the free plan.
[00:23:15.740] – Jonathan Denwood
I noticed that, yeah.
[00:23:17.120] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, so you wouldn’t be able to do certain things. There’s things in the paid platform, like having your custom domain, a custom email, or being able to even send emails. You need the paid platform to do that. And so if you sampled the free, I think the only thing you could really do would be try their content creation tools out and maybe throw something together just to sample it. But if you plan to do anything other than that with this platform, you’re going to end up paying for it. The other thing is, so there’s no apps with the platform, right? So if it’s going to be mobile, it’s going to be a web-based mobile. And when I did a search for reviews, Because I suspected this, most of the negatives on the reviews were lack of freedom in design, lack of freedom for images, like you couldn’t use third-party images from third-party sites. There’s a lot of restrictions into what you can build in the platform.
[00:24:18.760] – Jonathan Denwood
So you think talent cards has got this balance better?
[00:24:23.260] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think talent cards, compared to this, it really is more straightforward. I got a better plan on what I was actually being sold with talent cards than what I was being sold with 7Taps. 7taps does a great job of having a lot of content on their pages. But when you actually try to decipher the content and figure out what it is you’re actually getting access to or what you’re building, it’s not super clear.
[00:24:47.440] – Jonathan Denwood
No, I think they’re a great point. Their model is very… To me, it related very much to whatever somebody developing in the WordPress space with a plugin when they’re using the 3D model and the premium model. What functionality do they offer in the 3D? If they offer too little, it’s slightly crippled. If they offer too much, they’re going to go bankrupt because no one’s going to buy the premium plugin. It’s very tricky, and a lot of people have got it wrong, and that’s why they fail in the WordPress space. It’s one of the factors. I think it also applies to SaaS. What I think you’re saying is what they’re offering in the free and then what they offer in the enterprise, which is price on request, it doesn’t really quite gel with you. Would that be fair?
[00:25:43.340] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. If I’m going to sample something, I need a little more to sample. Yeah.
[00:25:48.000] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I think that’s totally fair. I think it’s been a great first show. I think we’re giving you some great info, or Kirk has. I don’t think I’ve done too bad. It’s not been a great day for me, folks, but I resigned to my fate. We’re going to go for our break, folks, and we’ll be back in a few moments. Three, two, one. We’re coming back. We’ve had a great first show. I just want to take the opportunity to point it out, a great free resource. Can’t talk today. That’s the Membership Machine Show Facebook group. Go Go to Facebook, put in the Membership Machine Show group, and we pop up. And it’s a great resource. If you got any questions that come in your mind, if you’re listening or watching this show, it’s a total free resource. You can go there, put your question, and there’s a nice little community there. I haven’t been doing much with it recently because I’ve been really busy traveling and dealing with stuff, but I’ll be getting back into moderating that as well a lot more. But It’s a great resource, folks, so think about going there and joining.
[00:27:05.000] – Jonathan Denwood
Let’s move on with our journey. Edume, EduMe. Edume. Yeah. Seemed a clean… Seemed okay. Price on request, watched some videos, don’t know as much about it as the first two that we talked about in the first half of the show. Do you know anything about them?
[00:27:30.000] – Kurt von Ahnen
I am cautiously optimistic that this is a platform I got the sample in 2015. Relatively sure. Now, this platform does something that’s very interesting, Jonathan. I don’t know if you picked up on this or not, While the other ones are saying, well, we’re good on mobile, or we’re good on this device, or we’re good on that device. This is actually a training delivery system. It’s a pretty cool deal. It will deliver training content It’ll deliver through Microsoft Teams accounts. It’ll deliver training content through SMS messaging. It’ll do… So it’s basically a… It’s like an outreach distribution, learning content scheduler that leverages different channels of communication to deliver the content. I’m making this sound harder than it is. Let’s say you have- Oh, I’m doing a fab job because I did…
[00:28:29.560] – Jonathan Denwood
I just I watched a few of their videos and read a few reviews. I think they’re based in the UK. The couple of videos I watched was done by a very polite English lady. But obviously, I didn’t do enough reviewing as what you have done.
[00:28:45.560] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s pretty cool. And so you basically go to them, which is probably why the pricing… You go to pricing, there’s no answers on pricing. It’s going to be all bespoke. But you go to and say, well, these are the platforms we communicate with our teams with. So we use SMS messaging, we use ClickUp, we use whatever. And then it’s going to integrate with what those platforms are to be like this content delivery mechanism to give people the training that they need on the schedule or timing that they require it. It’s a pretty cool system. And the reason I say I’m cautiously optimistic that I tried this, I was at a leadership seminar in Phoenix, Arizona, 2015, when I worked for Suzuki. They sent me there. And two of the vendors that I had met with because I was the training manager, so they were trying to give me this content, they signed me up for these and I would get notifications. One came to email and then a different vendor went to SMS messaging. And you would literally just get the content right to you, your device on your person, and it was forced you, almost like push notifications.
[00:29:56.580] – Kurt von Ahnen
And so it was a pretty cool setup. I didn’t see the advantage for doing that in training thousands of motorcycle mechanics around the country. I didn’t see that it was a great use for us in that use case, but I thought the platform itself was really cool.
[00:30:14.020] – Jonathan Denwood
On to the next one, Code of Talent. Obviously, it’s in the title. I think they’re aimed at the coding market, and they do have their prices. I did look at the reviews, and a lot I like the interface. I thought the interface was rather clean-looking. They got price starter plan, 799 per user, up to 25 users per month. Partner, 499 per user, 200 users per month. You can buy packs or if you go over the user bank, they charge you a slightly higher charge per user. But I did like the interface. I don’t know if you know anything about them.
[00:30:59.340] – Kurt von Ahnen
Two Two things rose to the top for me doing my research for the show today. One, and there’s details to go with what I’m saying there. But one was hard push for AI. Ai developed this, AI developed that, AI-powered learning journeys. A really hard push on AI. And truth be known, very transparent, I’m having a little bit of AI fatigue right now.
[00:31:26.840] – Jonathan Denwood
Aren’t we all? I’m sick of everything, and I use a ton of I’m sick of the… I call them the AI drug pushers. I think reality in the mix, this is only my opinion, folks. I think it’s a great technology. I think it’s there for the long term. I think it’s a bit like the internet. We were very early days, and it’s definitely not like crypto or the way crypto is sold. I’ve got still some very powerful awful qualms around crypto, but I really do think there’s definitely something there with AI. But the way it’s been marketed and pushed, and I’ve never seen anything like it, not even in the days of the dot-com boom. But I was living in the UK, and I was running a retail business, a pretty successful one. I wasn’t in the US during the dot com. It was less prevalent in the UK. I don’t know if it was worse. Was it worse in the dot com bubble than the AI bubble?
[00:32:45.220] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think the AI bubble is worse than the dot com.
[00:32:47.420] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I do. I’ve never seen it. I’ve never seen anything like it. Have you?
[00:32:52.700] – Kurt von Ahnen
Wordcamp US starts this week, and they announced that it was going to be an AI-centred event. I was so thankful didn’t have a ticket or bought air fare to Portland. Because like I said, I have a little fatigue on the topic. I’m hoping that it’ll bevel off with time, but right now I’m up to here with it. And when that’s the lead in on the page, I was like, No, no. The other thing was, it says that it’s the first blockchain micro learning platform. And I was really trying my best.
[00:33:29.400] – Jonathan Denwood
I mean, I What’s blockchain good to do? Well, blockchain, to prove the person, it probably has some relevance. You could prove that person actually did the course because online, if you’re doing top certification there, for your Microsoft and some of Oracle, they have you go to a center, don’t you? You have to go to a Pacific local center, and they’re videoing you to make sure it’s you to answer all the questions. And they’ve got the similar set-ups if you’re doing it remote because they want to make sure it’s you. They want to make sure they take biometric to make sure it’s you that’s turned up at the training center to take the course, take the exam. They got all that going, don’t they?
[00:34:21.360] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. And not for nothing, I did take exception. This was the first site that that you referred to me where it was trying to hire everybody else to be a salesman. So it says make £250,000 with five enterprise clients. And not for nothing, I have nightmares about people that think they’re go high level experts and all the people that are pushing from that side. And I think when you are trying to manage a learning company and you invite everyone in the world to be a salesman for you, I I think you run the same risk that go high level went through with theirs. It might be a great option for money and generating revenue, but I think over time, it waters down and devalues the brand.
[00:35:09.820] – Jonathan Denwood
You’re making some really fantastic points. I’m not, but you’re on fire today. I’m just deflated and a bit depressed that you’re on fire because that’s high… What’s the name? High point?
[00:35:25.770] – Kurt von Ahnen
Go High level.
[00:35:27.820] – Jonathan Denwood
High level. When I ever see somebody pushing some optimization solution and they’re using high level, I instantaneously lose interest in them because I haven’t got hired. They say a company that over-promised and under-delivered. That’s high level. That’s my opinion.
[00:35:50.160] – Kurt von Ahnen
That’s my opinion, too. It does a lot of cool things. It does, but so does a lot of other CRMs. I don’t need to go through seven friends of friends of friends to get account and do it. That’s what I’m talking about. That over-socialization of everybody’s a salesperson, we’re going to group fund that.
[00:36:11.700] – Jonathan Denwood
Their marketing optimization, I’ve never used it much in anger because I’m committed to WordPress, but their WordPress solution, I spent a bit of time looking at it and it was a dog’s breath. They pushed it hard, didn’t they? It didn’t go anywhere, did it? I think it’s still going, but it never got the traction they were hoping for, did it?
[00:36:35.060] – Kurt von Ahnen
No. There’s too many other things out there that work well.
[00:36:40.160] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, they’re stuck in the middle, aren’t they? They’re not WordPress, native WordPress solution, and then they’re not a SaaS solution, are they?
[00:36:49.940] – Kurt von Ahnen
Technically, I guess I would call it a SaaS solution. It’s like a weird community SaaS solution. It doesn’t make sense to me. The business model doesn’t make sense.
[00:37:00.000] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. These are our opinions, folks. Yeah, it’s my opinion. That’s our honest opinions, folks. Now, let’s look at WordPress. Wordpress, to my knowledge, It doesn’t have a purpose-made micro learning plugin solution. But there’s about three or four learning management systems. Lifter LMS is our favorite. Got You got LearnDash, and then you got Tutor LMS. I think all three of those are credible, and then there’s three or four additional ones. Can you take… Let’s just take Lifter LMS, because that’s the one that you’ve got the most experience with, and I have as well, can you take Lifter LMS because that’s the one that you got the most experience with, and I have as well. Can you take Lifter LMS, and can it be a micro learning platform?
[00:37:54.360] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, if we drive back to the original definition of micro learning, the answer is absolutely. Because micro learning is really about the content, not the delivery. And so if I have a long form course in Lifter LMS and I go, You know what? I’m struggling with course completion rates. I’m struggling with sales. I’m struggling with this. And I take that long form course and I bust that thing down into three or four courses. And each of those courses has five or six lessons in it. Each of those lessons is five to eight minutes long. Boom. Boom, I’ve got micro learning. Now, if we take this 17 steps further, that’s the Lifter LMS example. Anything you build in Lifter LMS in WordPress is going to be mobile responsive anyway. So it’s going to work on a mobile device. It’s going to do all the things that you think you’re paying for with the SaaS platform. But let’s say you go one step further and you’re like, I absolutely have to have a mobile app for my learners. Well, you could always go the learn-dash route, do the same thing I just described with Lifter LMS, but be in learn-dash with Buddy Boss and use their mobile application process.
[00:39:06.620] – Kurt von Ahnen
And then you would have a mobile app, you’d have micro learning, you’d be in WordPress, and you would be secure, you would have the benefit of a full customizable platform all the way around you. You could add content around it. You’d have a full content management system around your learning management system. And that’s why I really focus on WordPress being the right solution. For the record, I don’t think a lot of training people need a mobile application. I think that’s a way over concept.
[00:39:37.540] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, because to build a really good… There are some platforms out there that You got the no code movement that’s now placed on steroids with AI. I probably need to look at that a little bit myself, but I’ve just had so much on my plate. But that’s on steroids now, the AI. I quickly looked at a player called Bolt that uses AI. I’ve been looking at that. But in general, if you’re going to do it as a proof of concept, something like Bolt, and there’s a number of platforms out there, I don’t see anything wrong with it. But really, after the proof of concept, you really got to really… If you’re building something that’s reasonably complicated with functionality, you’re going to to go native. To build an app both for iOS and Android is still an expensive time-consuming process. I think a lot of people go into it much too early, so I totally agree with you there. What you’re really saying is it’s really about the content and a lot of the restrictions where these micro learning SaaS was the restrictions around legacy LMS built in-house or SaaS-based platforms that had a lot of legacy code that really weren’t that adaptive to micro learning or to mobile devices.
[00:41:14.690] – Jonathan Denwood
Is that about right?
[00:41:16.420] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, you nailed that right on the money. I understand. So it’s not that I don’t get it. I pitch to a lot of enterprise clients about what we can do for eLearn Because I’m a Scorm specialist. I can take your Scorm content, take it from a commercial platform and move you to WordPress, save you a couple of hundred grand a year.
[00:41:37.920] – Jonathan Denwood
Kirk’s the Scorm master.
[00:41:40.540] – Kurt von Ahnen
Scormpress. Com. Scormpress. Com. So anyway, we can do that. And I think there’s a switch in the vice president’s head, right? The guy that is making the decision in the boardroom, he keeps thinking to himself or herself, we’re already $8 million I’m getting into this thing. I can’t flush it down the drain and do something different. And I understand that battle. I understand it feels like you’re cutting off your nose despite your face. But if you could take that website that you’re paying 300 grand a year for, for hosting and maintenance, and you still have a training department that’s actually making the content for another half million dollars a year, you think about that much money being spent on eLearning, and then you go, wait a minute, Lyfter LMS, Infinity program, some WordPress hosting. How many users do we have? Well, great. We could probably do a great hosting package for 60, 70, $80 a month. That is a whole lot different than 400 grand a year. And so when you start really pushing the numbers and looking at a spreadsheet on top of, you have a full content management system surrounding the learning management system.
[00:42:52.380] – Kurt von Ahnen
You can build whatever you want as your learning management site instead of some restricted, bespoke, SaaS platform thing with a lack of options. Some of the things in the reviews for what we talked about today was the reviews said, there’s not a lot of design options for graphics. I can’t move. There’s not design options for fonts or for positioning of words with on the page. Well, there’s a reason for that. It’s like being the micro learning experts for these platforms, they wanted to give you something that was very restricted, very simple.
[00:43:27.180] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, it’s always… You’re making It’s a fantastic point. I’m not being rude here, but it’s always the contradiction, the yin and yang. If it’s simple, there has to be a reduction in functionality and flexibility. The more flexibility and functionality you have, the more the thing is going to be complexity, I think. Would you agree with that?
[00:43:54.900] – Kurt von Ahnen
I would agree. It’s very difficult for the people in charge of these budgets and these big companies, because if they’re the first one in their circles to say, Hey, you know what I think we should do? I think we should just build a whole new website and move all this stuff over. People are going to think they’re crazy, right? Because they’ve been locked into some platform for 12 or 15 years.
[00:44:17.020] – Jonathan Denwood
Then you’ve also got the struggle and this overlap, to some level increasing overlap, but overlap of the internal training learning management system, which Lifter can do. But we have a couple of added plugins like Fluent CRM or WP Funnel, and a couple like Fluent Booking, it can be external-facing membership, like Kajabi or Podia. They’re really for small entrepreneurs or organizations selling courses to the public, to our audience. But then you’ve got these learning management systems, and some do both, like learn worlds. They pitch themselves to both. But you’ve got this whole section where a learning management system is aimed for internal training, isn’t it? They’re like two separate worlds, aren’t they?
[00:45:27.220] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, and they’re worlds apart as far as perspective perception goes for the people that use them.
[00:45:33.180] – Jonathan Denwood
And audience and SEO, search engine optimization, and how you market yourself.
[00:45:38.960] – Kurt von Ahnen
You mentioned an interesting point, specifically the difference between internal training and external training. And it’s one of the conversations I have with many of my enterprise clients, especially about a Lifter LMS project, because I’m like, ‘Hey, if you want to have a private, accessible internal website, no one else can access it.’ However, for people who are logged in, we can restrict access to the whole site by membership. People can’t get into it at all. You could do that. Alternatively, you could utilize the membership tools, where staff training clicks this icon and customer training clicks this icon. Would you like to purchase a course from our menu? Click that icon; literally, you could have different pathways within your website that lead to different content. Many people are unaware that you can now do that on these sites. When you start talking about the practical application from a business perspective, some people just haven’t thought that far. A lot of people think they need multiple LMSs. As many corporate professionals will say, ‘Oh, we need a website for internal training.’ We also need a website to teach our customers how to use the product.
[00:46:42.700] – Kurt von Ahnen
Additionally, we also need a website for HR to use for onboarding new staff or similar purposes. They believe HR requires a separate site or property. And that’s not true. You can build pathways within the LMSes to meet all your needs. And so you’re not spending triple what you should spend.
[00:47:01.920] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, fantastic points. I think we’re going to wrap up the show now. If you have any questions, you can always visit the Membership Machine Show Facebook group and ask them there. But, Kirk, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you? Because Kirk’s very active on LinkedIn and on X, I call it Twitter. I think Kirek calls it X. He’s very active on all the social media platforms. I’ve taken a break over the last couple of months because, as Kirek knows, I’ve been really, really busy moving and traveling, and I’ve been all over the place, literally, mentally, and physically, haven’t I, Kirek? I’ve been a Jindering Gipsy over the… However, I’ve continued to run this podcast and manage the business. I think apart from a few breakdowns for me that Kirek’s watched, I don’t think I’ve done too badly a job, considering what’s been on my What do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:48:02.020] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, it’s all good. For me, Maniano Nomás will lead to anything that’s mine. Maniano Nomás on X, on Facebook. Then Jonathan nailed it. I’m the only Kurt von Ahnen on LinkedIn, so if you want to connect there, that’d be great.
[00:48:15.040] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes, and Kirk has been a great resource for WP tonic. He works with WP Tonic, but I also consider him a friend. I think in general, unless I’m having a mental breakdown, we work really well. It’s been a great show. If you really want to support the podcast, I have a quick request. If you’re listening to us on your phone, on iTunes, or Spotify, it’s really easy to leave a review, and it really does help the show. It expands the audience tremendously. If you are on iTunes or Spotify on your phone, it’s so easy to leave a review. They make it dead easy. It’s right on the interface. If you could leave a review, both Kirk and I would be really thankful. It really does help the show. We will return next week with another topic related to building an eLearning or membership website in 2025. We want you to be successful, so we provide all the advice and tools that you need to do that. We will be back soon, folks. Bye.
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